Native plants may give OSU-Cascades’s planned west-side campus a distinct look while cutting the costs of typical college landscaping.

Over the past two weeks, volunteers collected about 1,300 native plants at the 10-acre site, said Matt Shinderman, a senior instructor at OSU-Cascades. The plants — bunch grasses, wildflowers and bushes — came from the future site of the university’s first buildings and parking lot. They offer an economical and educational alternative to the expansive green lawns seen on many campuses around the country.

“Once these plants get established on site, they will require zero (watering) and zero maintenance,” Shinderman said.

The plants could be part of a “living laboratory” on the campus, Shinderman said, where OSU-Cascades students could learn about ecological restoration, urban landscaping and fire ecology. While wildfire likely won’t touch campus, he said, the plants could be arranged by size and species to demonstrate different periods of regrowth following a disturbance like a fire.

Construction is slated to begin on the campus before the Independence Day weekend and is expected to be complete by fall 2016.

A crew of about 10 volunteers joined Shinderman on Monday to search for and dig up native plants at the planned campus site adjacent to the SW Chandler Avenue and Century Drive roundabout. They brought in about 300 native plants, filling all the pots they had. Last Wednesday another volunteer corps gathered about 1,000 native plants. About a year ago OSU-Cascades students took an inventory of plants at the planned campus site.

Volunteers Monday included Camara Bedell-Stiles, 25, of Bend. Studying natural resource policy and management and sustainability, Bedell-Stiles starts her senior year this fall. She also serves as student body vice president.

She said the project was a “perfect opportunity” to work on restoration and gain an understanding of the site for the new campus. This spring she also helped pick up trash at the planned future home of OSU-Cascades.

Mary Fay, 63, of Bend, volunteered Wednesday and Monday with the native plant project. On Monday she potted plants with her friend Deb Brewer, 62, of Bend.

“It’s such a wonderful idea — to take it from the native area and put it back,” she said as she patted dirt around a native grass plant.

Volunteers passed the potted native plants to Mic Dunston, a worker for Winter Creek Restoration & Nursery. The Bend-based business donated potting soil and pots, as well as hauled the plants to its nursery on Deschutes Market Road where they’ll be stored for free.

For the next year or so until the plants go back into the ground at the new campus, Dunston said they will stay outside at the nursery.

“They’re all thriving out here so they don’t really need to go into a greenhouse,” he said Monday.

— Reporter: 541-617-7812, ddarling@bendbulletin.com